Gun Range Proposal Has NH Town Residents Clutching Their Pearls

It started easily enough. A gun store and range was looking to open in Warner, NH. At first, no one really seemed to mind. After all, isn’t New Hampshire the state that puts “Live Free or Die” on their license plates? A gun range is totally fine with these folks, right?

But three mornings after the mass shooting Nov. 5 at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, Warner resident Julie Orlando-Gibson emailed the local zoning board and urged them to reject the plan.

Ms. Orlando-Gibson, 48 years old, a mother of three who works in pharmaceutical sales, wrote that she is “pro-Second Amendment” and shares a home with a gun owner. But she said that such a business belonged “in a city-based warehouse facility where more police officers exist to manage issues.”

“I think it’s foolish for us not to realize mass shootings are a part of our world now,” she wrote.

Her letter is one of hundreds of comments pouring into the brick town hall in Warner, a no-stoplight community of 2,800 in the foothills of Mount Kearsarge. The flow of comments accelerated after recent mass shootings, and they reflected a divide in the community over whether a range would make it more, or less, safe. [Name redacted so as to not encourage more of these idiots], the shooter in the Las Vegas massacre Oct. 1 that killed 58 and injured 500, had practiced at a nearby shooting range.

​​Some, like Ms. Orlando-Gibson, said they were particularly worried about the gun store after the Texas gunman’s history of violence didn’t prevent him from purchasing weapons.

This is pathetic.

I’m sorry, but I just call ’em like I see ’em.

Not a soul in that town, much less those who want to open a gun range, have done a blasted thing to warrant this. For a state that prides itself on personal freedom, this is unconscionable.

Ms. Orlando-Gibson is right, mass shootings are part of our world, but they were part of our world well before now.

All blocking a gun range will do is making it more difficult for law-abiding people to practice their self-defense skills. It won’t do anything to those looking to slaughter the innocent.

While mass shootings are part of our world, they’re not something you should base your entire life–much less your community–around. Open the range and watch precisely nothing happen that’s tied to that operation.